Indian aggange marriage

                    Indian arrange marriage

Of course, there is always that dark side. While these situations are becoming rarer, they still occur often enough to warrant some discussion on them. There are those families who will use the bride's dowry as their own. Often in these situations, the bride's dowry will be recycled for the groom's sisters' dowry. Sometimes, the groom's family uses the bride's dowry entirely for their own means and the bride does not benefit from it all. There have been horrible, true stories of the groom's family agreeing to one dowry and after the bride is married (and I might add, no longer a virgin) demanding more from the bride's parents. Threats of divorce are often used to entice the bride's parents to give more dowry. In a country where shame is brought down on the divorcee, parents of the bride will do whatever they can to save their daughters this shame. Occasionally, the threat of physical violence is used. There really is no way these type situations can end happily. Even if the bride's parents are able to scrape together more dowry, they will not be able to continue doing so and in the end the bride is either sent home in shame or sometimes killed in an "accident".

Often people do not realize the dowry system has repercussions in many different areas other than the obvious horrible one stated above. Given the fact that a girl's parents must provide a substantial dowry plus try to give her a college education or some form of formal education today, it is not surprising that the number of girl abortions are extremely high in India. Interestingly, India theoretically is a culture which places high value on females. The females of a family are the life-blood, the pride and honor of that family. It is a very contradictory situation to see such importance placed on females and then to see the abortion rates of female babies sky high. Most college-educated Indians I have spoken to, both male and female, stand in firm objection to the dowry system and see that the twisted form it has taken is responsible for the degradation of women. In these families, girl children are just as prized as boy children and parents are teaching their daughters of their own worth as a human being